Dramatic Internet Speed improvement (Britain only?)

[Martin963]

I'm posting this as although it relates to Britain I'm hoping that the Telecoms experts on here (Tim,  Ernie,  Pachapapa?) might be able to extend the discussion out to France ,  or possibly not for reasons that will become apparent!

I've been with Eclipse as my ISP in Devon for two years now,  and one of the big advantages is that it is very rare for their service to slow down at all from the 472 kbps I get most of the time.   I say most because occasionally I get 720 kbps,  but only for periods of a few hours as a rule.

I was recently trying to get my tariff reduced but - to cut a long story short - I'm up against this same old "rural discrimination" where us folk in the country pay MORE because there is no LLU (local loop unbundling,  I suppose degroupage in France)  *AND* we get much slower speeds.

Anyway,  having vented my frustration to Eclipse that my neighbours get 960 kbps (again with Eclipse,  on our recommendation) using the copper pair that used to run *our* second line,  and being told that the speeds I was getting was about all I could expect,   they sent me a "BT I-Plate" filter that fits onto a standard BT primary wall plate socket.

Well not a lot happened the first day,  although I did notice I could now switch on my transmitters (MW & Band II)  without causing the ADSL to fall over,   something that was impossible in Britain up to now,   but had been OK in France (leaving aside the legalities of course!!)

But the next morning - REVELATION - my download speed had gone up from 472 kbps to 1930 kbps - yes 1.9 Meg,  you did read that right,  a fourfold increase.   Downloads of files now come in at 225 kBps as opposed to 55 kBps.

There are various "reviews" here of the filter

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Reviews.asp?ProductID=7256

and it seems many (but not all) people have experienced a huge improvement,  all for £10 (and I got mine free from Eclipse,  thanks guys!)

Now my hunch is that this WON'T work in France,   not so much because the filter won't "fit" on a French box but because I believe they don't use what we in Britain call PIN 3 ringing circuit wire.

Which is a real shame because I would love to get my Alice service up from its dozy 350 kbps average;  (no fault of Alice,  Club Internet was even worse, often just grinding to a complete halt of an evening).

What I still don't understand is why the ringing circuit wire in the house is contributing so many problems.    Is it because in some way it's "unbalanced" in comparison with the wires to pins 2 and 5?    If so,   and thinking about France now,  is there some merit in stripping out all the connections to pin 5 (and any other terminals that are wired, other than 1 and 3 of course) to try and make the system more immune to interference?

And anyway,  what IS all this interference?   RF?   50 Hz?

As I say,   some detailed input (rather than "they just do it differently in France") would be really welcome.   Even if it's just to say that there's nothing similar to be done to improve French ADSL speeds.

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

Apparently there are a couple of capacitors in French phone sockets that nowadays are redundant but slow down ADSL speeds. Also, my Darty Box is connected with only two wires to the socket so presumably you coulddo away with all the others.

I'm sure one of the experts will be along soon to tell you (a) if I'm terribly wrong or (b) the details of how to do the necessary.

[BJSLIV]

Yes it's all mumbo jumbo to me but I agree that the Iplate does work.I did read somewhere that the ADSL lines are prone to interference from things such as Microwaves, mobile phones etc. The bell wire acts as a big aerial and when the box is talking to the exchange trying to establish the connection any of this chatter reduces the speed at which the line will sync. One article said that people often complain about connections having problems in the evening, and this is partly due to all the extra equipment being used at that time.

On our BT line we usually synced at 4500 or 5200 which meant that the exchange would regulate the connection at 3500. however we regularly dropped to 2500 due to interference. That meant switching off the box and waiting for things to lock on at 3500 again.

I was offered an Iplate for about £8 and thought it was probably a snake oil job, but whats £8?

The plate arrived earlier this week, easily fitted, and the line connected at 6200, and settled down at 5500 and has stayed like that ever since.

It doesn't protect you against the normal loss of speed due to congestion, but when it's going at full speed......

All in all a good investment. Te BT speed forecaster predicted that our line was capable of around 4000 so the plate means we are doing better than expected.

Its going to make my old Neuf 512 seem pretty slow. I can see I'll be upgrading to Nordnet's offer 0f 15000!

 

 

[pachapapa]

All the Iplate does is removes the bell wire basically so it increases your speed..speed increase is dependant on line quality, length, internal wiring, etc

Im connected to the cudworth exchange (SLCUD)..live 1.4 miles away..sync at 4.2mbps and still only get 2mbps out of that.

If you remove the bell wire yourself, you save £11 there.

Looked at link you quoted, above a typical comment, however there is no active bell wire on an FT connection. System is based on two active wires to master connection ie socket where FT cable comes through wall, the rest of the wires are redundant unless you want an additional line or fax with a separate number. All ISPs recommend removing the capacitor, originally used for checking line continuity. So I cant see how it would help in France in improving Bandwidth. A lot of expatriate Brits remain with their original FT telephone connection which requires a low frequency filter supplied by the ISP and in my opinion this may affect the interference, particularly if several telephones are involved. I have removed the capacitor, have no FT phone but I have two phones connected to the VOIP socket on the AliceBox, one upstairs and one downstairs.

Low ADSL Bandwidth  seems to be principally the attenuation due to the distance between the subscriber and the DSLAM in the telephone exchange plus the quality of the connection. In my neck of the woods more than 5 kilometres effectively means no ADSL and only DialUp.

[Martin963]

Thanks guys.   Rather confirms that I'll have to live with slow ADSL in France for a while.    I think we're over 6 km from the exchange so in a way the fact it works at all is a blessing.

[Gyn_Paul]

I can confirm that: I've temporarily connected my Free Box directly to the FT drop wire; i.e. clear and clean of any circuitry and in-house wiring, and it has made no difference to the speeds. Nice experiment, though!

p

[Martin963]

Thanks Paul for the experiment you performed.  Interesting and confirms the (French) advantage of a lack of third wire for ADSL.

It all does flag up why my tx's caused such havoc on ADSL in Britain but not in France.

Shame the filters don't work in France,   I am still totally stunned by the transformation in performance wrought by a £10 box.